Compost is generally defined as any organic material that has undergone a biodegradation process. Typical examples of compost are decomposed leaves, sewage sludge which has been mixed with wood chips or other material to allow air to permeate the sludge, and mushroom soil. Compost is usually applied to golf courses, lawns and park grounds as a thin even top dressing. In the past, the proper application of compost has required the use of small material spreading machines. Whether of the pull type or self propelled, material spreading machines are commonly used for applying dressings to turf-covered ground, such as ground surfaces used for various athletic activities, and especially football fields and golf courses. Such material spreading machines commonly include a hopper and a moving belt which passes within or beneath the hopper to convey the material to a distribution mechanism, such as a rotating brush, that dispenses the material onto the surface of the ground.
Typically, compost material spreading machines are equipped with a rotating brush distributing apparatus, which is usually mounted at the rear of a moving belt that carries the compost to the rotating brush distributor. One of the large material spreading machines is found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,804,145, granted to Shaun A. Seymour on Feb. 14, 1989, in which the hopper is a substantially rectangular spreader box with a rotating brush at the discharge end of the spreader box to distribute the compost onto the top surface of the ground. A similar apparatus is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,202,944, granted to Kevin McCrory on Mar. 20, 2001, wherein the hopper meters the flow of compost into a thin layer to be presented to the rotating brush distributor that dispenses the compost onto the top surface of the ground.
In some material spreading machines, such as is depicted in U.S. Pat. No. 4,634,056, issued on Jan. 6, 1987, to Carroll Precure, the compost is distributed directly by the endless belt extracting the compost from within the hopper. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,155,315, issued to John Dobbins on May 22, 1979, the compost is distributed directly from the hopper onto the top surface of the ground, the rate of application of the material from the hopper being controlled by a slidable plate positionable across the opening in the hopper through which the material flows. A ground-engaging roller supported on the frame of the Dobbins material spreading machine provides sufficient vibration to the compost within the hopper to prevent the material from bridging over the discharge opening. A rotary screening device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,892,516, granted on May 17, 2005, to Salvatore Ardagna, by which material, including compost, can be sifted and separated for appropriate application subsequently to the separation action of the apparatus.
All of these known compost material spreading machines are particularly adapted for utilization on athletic fields and golf courses, as the machines carry large quantities of compost for topdressing large areas of turf-covered ground. None of these known material spreading machines are particularly well adapted for use in small locations, such as a residential yard, in which maneuverability is needed and manual control over the distribution of the compost material over the ground. One of the problems with spreading compost is that compost is not uniformly sized. The variably sized compost particles will not go through a small lawn push spinner spreader or through a small lawn push drop spreader. A V-shaped hopper with a roller at the bottom of the hopper will accommodate the varying particle size, but is only effective if the compost material is dry. Compost material that has moisture will have a tendency to clump and bridge over the opening at the bottom of the V-shaped hopper. Thus, commonly used fertilizer spinner and drop spreaders typically used on small residential lawns, are not effectively operable to provide a topdressing of compost over turf-covered ground.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a manually operable push-type configuration of compost spreading machine that can be used in small locations for the application of limited quantities of compost or other granular soil additive materials to the top surface of turf-covered ground.